Ph.D. Dissertation

by Peter Norberg
 
 
The Calvinist Church-Room and the Amorality of Financial Markets
 
 

The core element of this Doctor’s thesis is an understanding of the mentality of financial markets. To this aim, I have made interviews in Swedish merchant banks and mutual funds.  I try to situate the financial market of Stockholm in its social context. Account is taken of impulses both from foreign markets to high finance of Stockholm, and of influence from society to financial markets. The Max Weber thesis of ascetic Protestantism as a fundament for the modern spirit of capitalism is of main importance in this investigation. In a secularised version, the puritan ethic has given rise to a mentality that still guides the evolution of capitalism. Success in financial markets is most easily achieved by subscribing to the classical Protestant Ethic. 
 
 


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Calvinism and
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